CHAPTER ONE
Out of the Night
If you think it's an easy life being a mystic, you ought to try telling fifteen fortunes a day, at $25 a time, and then see whether you're quite so keen on it.
At the same moment that Karen Tandy was consulting Dr. Hughes and Dr. McEvoy at the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital, I was giving old Mrs. Winconis a quick tour of her immediate prospects with the help of the Tarot cards.
We were sitting around the green baize table in my
Tenth Avenue
flat, with the drapes drawn tight and the incense smoldering suggestively in the corner, and my genuine simulated antique oil lamp casting pretty mysterious shadows. Mrs. Winconis was wrinkled and old and smelled of musty perfume and fox-fur coats, and she came around every Friday evening for a detailed rundown of the seven days ahead.
As I laid out the cards in the Celtic cross, she fidgeted and sniffed and peered across at me like a moth-eaten ermine scenting its prey. I knew she was dying to ask me what I saw, but I never gave any hints until the whole thing was set out on the table. The more suspense, the better. I had to go through the whole performance of frowning and sighing, and biting my lips, and making out that I was in communication with the powers from beyond. After all, that's what she paid her $25 for.
But she couldn't resist the temptation. As the last card went down, she leaned forward and asked: "What is it, Mr. Erskine? What do you see? Is there anything about Daddy?"
"Daddy" was her name for Mr. Winconis, a fat and dour old supermarket manager who chain-smoked cigars and didn't believe in anything more mystical than the first three runners at Aqueduct. Mrs. Winconis never suggested as much, but it was plain from the way she talked that her greatest hope in life was for Daddy's heart to give out, and the Winconis fortune to come her way.
I looked at the cards with my usual elaborate concentration. I knew as much about the Tarot as anybody did who had taken the trouble to read Tarot Made Easy, but it was the style that carried it off. If you want to be a mystic, which is actually easier than being an advertising copywriter, or a summer camp warden, or a coach-tour guide, then you have to look like a mystic.
Since I am a rather mousy thirty-two-year-old from Cleveland, Ohio, with the beginnings of a bald patch underneath my scrubby brown hair, and a fine but overlarge nose in my fine but pallid face, I took the trouble to paint my eyebrows into satanic arches, and wear an emerald satin cloak with moons and stars sewn on it, and perch a triangular green hat on my head. The hat used to have a badge on it that said Green Bay Packers, but I took it off, for obvious reasons.
I invested in incense, and a few leather-bound copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a beaten-up old skull from a secondhand store in the Village, and then I placed an advertisement in the newspapers which read: "The Incredible Erskine — Fortunes Read, Future Foretold, Your Fate Revealed."
Within a couple of months, I was handling more business than I knew what to do with, and for the first time in my life I was able to afford a new Mercury Cougar and a quad stereo with earphones to match. But, as I say, it wasn't easy. The constant tide of middle-aged ladies who came simpering into my apartment, dying to hear what was going to happen in their tedious middle-aged lives, was almost enough to drown me forever in the well of human despair.
"Well?" said Mrs. Winconis, clutching her alligator pocketbook in her wrinkled old fingers. "What can you see, Mr. Erskine?"
I shook my head slowly and magnificently. "The cards are solemn today, Mrs. Winconis. They carry many warnings. They tell you that you are pressing too hard toward a future that, when it comes to pass, you may not enjoy as much as you thought. I see a portly gentleman with a cigar — it must be Daddy. He is saying something in great sorrow. He is saying something about money."
"What is he saying? Do the cards tell you what he is saying?" whispered Mrs. Winconis. Whenever I mentioned 'money,' she started to twitch and jump like spit on a red-hot stove. I've seen some pretty ugly lusts in my time, but the lust for money in middle-aged woman is enough to make you lose your lunch.
"He is saying that something is too expensive," I went on, in my special hollow voice. "Something is definitely too expensive. I know what it is. I can see what it is. He is saying that canned salmon is too expensive. He doesn't think that people will want to buy it at that price."
"Oh," said Mrs. Winconis, vexed. But I knew what I was doing. I had checked the price-rise column in the Supermarket Report that morning, and I knew that canned salmon was due for an increase. Next week, when Daddy started complaining about it, Mrs. Winconis would remember my words, and be mightily impressed with my incredible clairvoyant talents.
"What about me? asked Mrs. Winconis. "What is going to happen to me?"
I stared gloomily at the cards.
"Not a good week, I'm afraid. Not a good week at all. On Monday you will have an accident. Not a serious one. Nothing worse than dropping a heavy weight on your foot, but it will be painful. It will keep you awake Monday night. On Tuesday, you will play bridge with your friends as usual. Someone will cheat you, but you will not discover who it is. So keep your stakes small, and don't take any risks. Wednesday you will have an unpleasant telephone call, possibly obscene. Thursday you will eat a meal that does not agree with you, and you will wish that you never ate it."
Mrs. Winconis fixed me with her dull gray eyes. "Is it really that bad?" she asked.
"It doesn't have to be. Remember that the cards can warn as well as foretell. If you take steps to avoid these pitfalls, you will not necessarily have such a bad week."
"Well, thank God for that," she said. "It's worth the money just to know what to look out for."
"The spirits think well of you, Mrs. Winconis," I said, in my special voice. "They care for you, and would not like to see you discomfited or harmed. If you treat the spirits right, they will treat you right."
She stood up. "Mr. Erskine, I don't know how to thank you. I'd best be getting along now, but I'll see you next week, won't I?"
I smiled my secret smile. "Of course, Mrs. Winconis. And don't forget your mystic motto for the week."
"Oh, no, of course not. What is it this week, Mr. Erskine?"
I opened a tattered old book that I kept on the table next to me. "Your mystic motto for this week is: 'Guard well the pips, and the fruit shall grow without let.'"
She stood there for a moment with a faraway smile on her withered old face. "That's beautiful, Mr. Erskine. I shall repeat it every morning when I wake up. Thank you for a wonderful, wonderful session."
"The pleasure," I said, "is all mine."
I showed her to the elevator, taking care that none of my neighbors saw me in my ridiculous green cloak and hat, and waved her a fond farewell. As soon as she had sunk out of sight, I went back into my flat, switched on the light, blew out the incense, and turned on the television. With any luck, I wouldn't have missed too much of Kojak.
I was just going to the icebox to fetch myself a can of beer when the telephone rang. I tucked the receiver under my chin, and opened up the beer as I talked. The voice on the other end was female (of course) and nervous (of course). Only nervous females sought the services of a man like The Incredible Erskine.
"Mr. Erskine?"
"Erskine's the name, fortune-telling's the game."
"Mr. Erskine, I wonder if I could come round and see you."
"Of course, of course. The fee is twenty-five dollars for your ordinary glimpse into the immediate future, thirty dollars for a year's forecast, fifty dollars for a lifetime review."